State fair's 50-Year-Club back for more

Kathy Lynn Gray, The Columbus Dispatch

Tuesday

Jul 30, 2013 at 12:01 AMJul 30, 2013 at 12:42 PM

Wheelchairs, canes, caretakers and cloudy vision can't keep members of the 50-Year Club from the clamor and excitement of the 2013 Ohio State Fair. More than 80 converged there yesterday for the group's annual coffee-and-doughnuts get-together, then maneuvered through the crowds to admire the butter cow, visit a few sheep and eat a lamb sandwich or two at the 163-year-old fair.

Wheelchairs, canes, caretakers and cloudy vision can’t keep members of the 50-Year Club from the clamor and excitement of the 2013 Ohio State Fair.

More than 80 converged there yesterday for the group’s annual coffee-and-doughnuts get-together, then maneuvered through the crowds to admire the butter cow, visit a few sheep and eat a lamb sandwich or two at the 163-year-old fair.

And share their stories.

Wendell Ellenwood, 91, of Dublin, remembered how, as a member of the state fair band in the 1930s, he slept in a tent and showed a heifer in the stalls under the railroad tracks that run along the fairgrounds.

What sticks out in 91-year-old Betty Martin’s mind is when she worked at the fair’s Gate 9 as a junior in high school and fainted from the heat “because I didn’t have a hat.” Originally from Licking County, she lives on the Northwest Side.

And Irene Godfrey, 94, figures she’s been coming to the fair for 83 years, starting as a kid when her brother showed cattle from their dairy farm in Kirkersville in Licking County and she was a 4-H member.

For one morning each year during the fair, club members meet in the Rhodes auditorium to hear the All-Ohio State Fair band and choir, listen to a few welcoming speeches, collect door prizes and discuss the group’s goals: to raise money for more trees on the grounds and to encourage more people to come to the annual meeting.

New member Tom Calhoon of the Northwest Side said he was “shocked” to find out he qualified to be in the club this year. He’s 64 and started coming to the fair at the age of 14.

“Some people say this is the best-kept secret at the fair,” club President John Fark, 65, of Marion, told the group yesterday. “It’s really hard to be a member of this group: Just show up, and you’re in.”

Beautiful weather drew people of all ages to the fair on Sunday, when an estimated 115,288 patrons set a daily attendance record.An estimated 349,997 patrons had attended the fair through Sunday, fair officials said.

For the 50-Year Club, no proof of 50 years of fair attendance is required, but age is a good gauge. Godfrey and Kenneth Stewart, 94, of Zanesville, were the oldest at yesterday’s meeting. Stewart started showing beef cattle at the fair when he was 10 but didn’t realize until this year that the 50-Year Club existed. This was the first time he’d attended the club’s meeting — its 74th.

Stewart then planned to visit the dairy barn and watch the six-horse hitch and kids fishing in the natural resources area.

Godfrey’s goals were to have a butter-pecan ice-cream cone in the dairy building and a pulled-pork sandwich in the Taste of Ohio building and to take a spin through the sheep barn.

And then?

“I’d like to go home and take a nap.”

kgray@dispatch.com

@reporterkathy

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.